Keep children safe

This past Mother’s Day, Toledo news media reported an incident no mother should ever have to read or fear; yet another child was shot to death with a firearm. A four-year old boy shot himself with his father’s gun. The report stated it was an “accident.” The toddler “shot himself in the face after finding an unsecured weapon.”

Accident.

Many households do a better job of protecting their children from cleaning solutions than from firearms. If you have a firearm in your home and you have children in your home, you must:

• Secure your firearm, and

• Educate your children about firearm safety.

If you have a loaded firearm in your home, you must keep that firearm secured in a way that it is not accessible to children. Period.

Do these things to keep your children safe:

• Always keep guns locked and out of reach of children.

• Store ammunition in a place different from the guns.

• Never leave a gun out and unattended.

• Tell your kids never to touch a gun or gun parts — in your house or anyone else’s.

This is a safety issue, pure and simple. Politics, ideology, Second Amendment rights, legal and other issues aside, as responsible firearms owners, we have an absolute duty to keep firearms away from children.

If you have questions about how to store firearms safely away from children, check out these resources: